Wednesday, July 23, 2008

First Things First

Here's the news:

The God who made this earth, and everything originally found in it - since He's Master of it all - doesn't actually dwell inside anything man-made; no temples, church buildings, trinkets, medallions, books, nothing. Nor is He directly aided by human effort (as if He needed our help, since He’s the One who gives all people life, and puts air in the lungs of every living creature).

This same God [as crazy as this sounds] created one man, and every ethnic group on the face of the earth descends from this one man. The times and places they live were decided by this God, with the desire that they would seek Him, and find Him (though He isn’t too far away from any of us). After all, in Him we have life, movement, and existence; just like many people have written before, “we are His Children.”

And since we’re the progeny of God, we certainly shouldn’t believe that His Divine Nature shares anything in common (substance-wise) with any idol or statue some artist created (even if it were made from gold or silver or even diamonds).

So, God has sort of turned a blind eye towards all of our insane beliefs for quite some time [instead of just sweeping us from the earth for denying Who He is], but now tells us that everyone – everywhere – needs a massive paradigm shift concerning Him.

This is rather urgent, because God has marked a day on the calendar when He is going to judge the world (in His perfect righteousness) through a Man He’s chosen. He’s proven that this will be the case, because this “Man” was tortured to death, and yet was raised from the dead.

Who was this Man? Technically, it’s “who IS this Man,” because – like I wrote before – He came back from the dead. His name was Y’shua, but most English-speakers call Him Jesus. He is the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God, and Lord over all creation. But more directly to our point here – this Jesus died for our sins (re: all that insane stuff mentioned before about denying Who God really is), which was predicted to happen hundreds and hundreds (and thousands) of years before it actually took place, in the Hebrew scriptures.

See, this Jesus is the only Son to come from God (as in, He shares the same Divine Substance as His Father). But God loves us insane humans so much that He sacrificed His Son Jesus, so that anyone amongst us who looks to Him in faith can forgo this coming judgment (mentioned above), and receive eternal life.

That’s the basic message. What you do with it is between you and God. But you will talk with Him about it one day…